Why 'We Tried That Once' is the Most Dangerous Phrase in Marketing

"We tried that once, it didn’t work" is a red-flag phrase I often hear from founders as we discuss their early go-to-market efforts.

That phrase often reveals a deeper problem of a lack of strategic thinking and process maturity with the sales and marketing function.  

Let’s unpack what I often find when I dig into these situations.

1. No Iteration, No Progress

Effective GTM requires iteration. Rarely does a new tactic, channel, creative or campaign succeed on its first try. Even if it does “work” on the first use, it can almost always be improved as you receive feedback from the market.  Optimizing and testing are essential to finding the most efficient and effective approach for different audiences, channels, and creative. If a founder is taking a “one and done” approach, it’s a clear sign that the team isn’t embracing the experimental mindset needed to drive growth.

2. No documented hypothesis

The rapid pace and iteration of start ups lead some teams to eschew the process of developing and documenting a plan for their efforts.  Without an outline of why the team is launching this effort and what they expect the results to be, there will be no impartial standard to gauge whether something was “successful” or not.  Without a clear hypothesis to be validated/invalidated, organizations will miss out on the institutional learning that can come from even a “failure.”  Keeping track of all your hypotheses helps organizations build a more complete picture of your market and customers over time.    

3. Absence of Data-Driven Insights

When GTM efforts fail, the next step should be analyzing why. Did we reach the target audience?  Did the message resonate with the audience? Did the audience take the action we wanted them to? A blanket rejection of a tactic without an interrogation of the data suggests the team isn’t leveraging market feedback to improve their future efforts. Organizations are drowning in data, but few take the time to fully explore the data they have available and then test iterations of their GTM efforts until they understand what the data is saying.

4. Fear of Innovation

Markets and GTM are evolving rapidly. Channels and tactics that didn’t work a year ago may now be viable with new technology, audience behavior, improved techniques or a new product. When teams are stuck in the “we tried it” mentality, it indicates an unwillingness to revisit past experiments, which can stifle innovation and keep a company focused on channels that have already been proven to “work.”  Even when everything is working, I encourage GTM teams to invest at least 10% of their time and resources into experimenting with different variables – channels, creative, targeting, etc – in their marketing mix to make sure they aren’t overlooking viable growth opportunities. 

5. Short-Term Result Over Long-Term Strategy

Your go-to-market is a long game, not a quick fix. The idea that a single, failed attempt is enough to write off an entire strategy suggests a reactive, short-term approach to building the business. Well-run organizations recognize that not all GTM efforts lead to an immediate outcome.  Some assets such as brand awareness, building demand, and identifying customer value takes time and persistence.  Myopically focusing on the near-term results and not how this fits into a broader, longer-term effort means some organizations lose the forest for the trees. 

This isn’t to say that GTM efforts won’t fail if your organization: has a plan, develops data-driven insights, focuses on the long-term, etc.  But in my experience, those organizations do not start GTM discussions with a phrase like “we tried that, it didn’t work.”  Instead they tend to say “here’s what we learned the last time we tried that” and “can we do something different to make this work in the future?”